Gas Tax for SC? Hell No, Say Kochs

You may not be surprised to find that the Kochs and their right wing organization, Americans for Prosperity, don't think we South Carolinians should be funding infrastructure projects.  Not that the roads and bridges don't desperately need improvement.  The Kochs just don't think tax dollars should pay for it.

And their campaign to stick their nose in our business in order to prevent this increase in the gas tax is all over the place.  When I googled Americans for Prosperity and SC gas tax, the first four websites were by AFP, with the very first one headed:  South Carolina Opposes Proposed Gas Hike.  Well, hold on a minute --  that sounds like the "Americans are against Obamacare" gambit.  And it is.  The article, full of lies and blazing rhetoric, states in no uncertain terms that even a five cent increase would kill "nearly 1,000 jobs," destroy investment and small businesses, and drive every one of us South Carolinians into poverty and ruin.

If only we were able to tell the truth with as much passion.

In fact, South Carolina has come together in a way that is rarely seen, in agreement that our roads and bridges need attention immediately.  With the lowest gas prices in years -- and before the Kochs and their ilk are able to figure out how to get them back up over $3 a gallon -- now is the ideal time to raise the tax without doing economic damage.

But as far as the Kochs are concerned, money that goes to pay taxes is money that isn't going into their pockets.

So they have used their great brains and deep pockets to do an all-out ad campaign, far beyond the big google website manipulation.

In a well-publicized publicity stunt in Greenville and Summerville, Americans for Prosperity covered the federal and state gas tax for anyone lining up to buy tax-free gas.  And line up they did.  Here's a situation where people just didn't know they couldn't afford to pay tax on gas until they found out how much it cost when the taxes were deducted.  Thanks to alerts from AFP, the media was all over it.  Brilliant.  If only they could use these great minds to educate our kids.  (Wait a minute, they are:  they are "generously" funding our South Carolina colleges in order to have free reign to indoctrinate students on right-wing economic dogma.)

But while all the attention is on the gas tax, let's not imagine they would forget public transportation.  Lies about your tax dollars being spent frivolously, loud lies, repeated lies.

Americans for Prosperity, American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C. -- which calls itself "non-partisan"), State Policy Network, and who knows how many other fronts for right-wing, anti-American, pro-corporate interests, especially the richest of the rich, the Kochs and Koch Industries.

Why, we wonder, would the wealthiest pair in the world, be so focused on each and every attempt we make to improve our communities by raising a tax?  For gods' sake, this isn't even an income tax, some right wingnuts might even call it a "fair" tax.

The answer has to do with strangling government.  The more our infrastructure crumbles, the more our schools fail, the more we risk bankruptcy and poor health because our health care system has failed, the more secure will be the Kochs.  Not because they need the money.  What they need is the power.  They know that if we ever figure out their game, our government will begin to regulate their enormous excesses.  So keep making the government evil, by pointing out not the services we need, but that we are paying to get government services.  Cut those taxes, make the services suffer, and then tell us how bad government really is.

They are expert in engendering fear, but also holding the carrot out in front of us, as they did with the tax-free gas gimmick.

But here in Charleston, and I'm sure in other communities, our progressive leaders are working just as hard to educate the public by pointing out the lies.

You can help by getting on social media and spreading the truth.  Share and retweet articles that point out the fallacies and the damage being done by Americans for Prosperity.  Lies that assert that we all will suffer if gas goes up a nickel a gallon, that CARTA is spending your tax dollars frivolously, that all of South Carolina is against a gas tax.  Call bullshit on these creeps.

Getting Away with Lies

Yesterday, the Post & Courier had an opinion piece by Dave Schwartz.  You may not know him; he doesn't even have a wikipedia page.  But this is just the way his employer, David Koch, of the Americans for Prosperity, likes it.  Anonymity allowed him and his brother, the other Koch, to get away with years of control of our legislators, until investigative journalists like Rachel Maddow forced them out of the shadows.

So we have this new guy who comes into town and spreads lies about bad government and good corporations, bad taxes and good job creators, and then moves on.  He has been State Director for AFP in Maryland, then Virginia, and now South Carolina.

The opinion piece in the Post and Courier is an example of the dirtiest of dirty work, full of blatant and absurd lies, like calling the American Legislative Exchange Council "non-partisan."  He argues, predictably, that it is our high state taxes that is the cause of all our ills.  If only we had low taxes like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, we would have -- that's right -- job growth and prosperity.  And he sites that other "non-partisan" group, the Civitas Institute, for research that states that SC has the highest tax rate and the "lowest take-home pay in the region."  The Civitas Institute, for those of you who aren't aware, is that North Carolina group of right wing-nuts who, despite Schwartz claim that they are non-partisan, describes themselves as "North Carolina's conservative voice."  A voice that is funded by Art Pope, who as NC budget director engineered the cutbacks that have devastated North Carolina in recent years.  He has just resigned; we might want to keep an eye on him to see where he will be going to spread his dysentery next.

Anyway, to get back to Dave Schwartz and the Post & Courier.  He has made claims in that piece that are totally fabricated, made to scare and anger readers.  We know he is disseminating lies.  We know that our governor bribes businesses to our state with tax giveaways, that our education system suffers as a result, that too many of our workers are not paid a living wage.  We know that the reason our economic growth in SC is lower than much of the rest of the country is that our yahoos in the legislature and our governor are wasting our resources working to cut services to the poor, deny voting rights to seniors and minorities, and ensure that workers are not allowed to fight for a living wage.  We also know that big corporations are favored over small businesses, and that because the wealthy who profit in our state are not made to contribute, our education, health care and infrastructure resembles that of a third world country, where the lines are clearly drawn between the rich and the poor, and those in the shrinking middle struggle every day to access the American dream.

We should not allow Dave Schwartz and other Koch and Pope minions to get away with disseminating lies without fear of contradiction.  When we see an article online, let's quickly comment.  Let's write letters to the editor pointing out the fallacies and distortions, and correcting the misinformation.  Let's not complain among ourselves, or ignore these outrages.  They will not go away.  They will invade and erode, so that truth becomes fiction.  They snuck into North Carolina like body snatchers and left its government wasted and its people devastated.

It is hard to believe that we have elections coming up in a few months.  Interest has been pretty lackadaisical, considering all we have at stake.  Our Democratic politicians and candidates aren't screaming loud enough, they aren't showing enough outrage.  Shouldn't one of those candidates be writing an Op Ed in the Post and Courier denouncing Dave Schwartz's ridiculous claims?

Somebody, anybody, everybody, please, speak out.  And let's start with the fact that he is misrepresenting who he is and what his organizations stand for. 

Getting Slammed and Fighting Back

Here is the difference between Democrats and Republicans:  we Dems -- the ones who volunteer and vote -- are doing okay, but we know that there are others who are not.  We understand that we will all do better when we all do better.  We also empathize with those who are struggling.  We see ourselves in them.  Republicans, on the other hand, are focused on getting the most for themselves.  Capitalism, Christianity, even democracy are twisted to their own needs.

So when it comes to getting out the vote, when it comes to firing up the electorate, the republican party knows how to make it meaningful for their voters.  Even if they have to lie.

They make it about jobs, and don't mention that those jobs will underpay and offer no security.  Nikki Haley is running on all those jobs she brought into the state, but neglects to mention that our tax dollars paid for giveaways to those corporations so that they could pay less than they would elsewhere.

On the republican side, the mantra is to cut taxes.  Well, everything else is going up but our taxes, so it makes sense, doesn't it, that what we get for our tax dollars is going to be struggling schools, poor highways, inadequate medical care.  But with the millions of dollars that goes into campaigns, most voters only see the message that their candidate will provide jobs and cut government.  A simple good/bad message.

I just watched the documentary film, Koch Brothers Exposed, and although I have lately been working hard to take our state and country's downward spiral in stride, I have to admit that it brought me to tears.  The Koch brothers, having done their dirty work in attempting to segregate schools and controlling the universities and state government in North Carolina, have set their sights on South Carolina.  They now have three offices in the state, the newest one in Mount Pleasant.  They are of course, going to work to cut taxes, thereby making our government even more ineffective, and continuing the push to privatize education.

Our Supreme Court (and I use the word "our" quite loosely) has made it clear that money talks and the rest of us can just do what we are told.  Shovel money into banning women's reproductive freedom, and the Supremes are all for it.  While corporations have become people and as such have unfettered freedom of speech, as in the ability to buy candidates and elections, the rest of us have lost our own religious liberty, along with the right to the health care we are paying for, equal opportunity in education, and the right to vote.  All with the blessing of the evil Scalia and his right wing-nuts, bought and paid for by the Kochs.

More depressing even than that is that all nine justices voted to allow abusive demonstrators access to abortion clinics, as a freedom of speech issue, apparently not recognizing the irony that we the people can get nowhere near the justices themselves to engage in our own freedom of speech.

So it's been a tough time.  The greedy and powerful are able to control the uninformed and insecure.  We need to fight fire with fire.  We need more wealthy supporters who understand the cost of increased poverty, underemployment, poor education, poor health, low taxes and an unfair tax system.  We need politicians that understand that voters need to know exactly how this bad system affects them.  Sadly, those with health care have been led to believe it will cost them more if others are insured.  They need to see in black and white how much emergency care is costing them, and the jobs that come with health care expansion.  Most of us can't see how bad roads risk lives, but give them dollars and cents of how much wear and tear on their car will cost going over those potholes.  Compare the cost of increasing the prison population versus improving schools.

It saddens me that we have as a nation become so self-absorbed that we are unable to see that what affects one affects us all.  That insecure politicians can be bought so easily.  That the wealthy who now control our elections find it so easy to appeal to the lowest common denominator among us.

But the Koch brothers don't waste their time worrying about the way things should be.  They look at what we are, and they use it.  If we are made vulnerable by our fears and insecurities, then we need our progressive candidates to understand what we are afraid of and explain to us what they can do to help.

Irony Abounds

Where to start?

First of all, immediately after announcing Paul Ryan as his running mate, both Mitt and his new sidekick proceeded to blast President Obama for cutting Medicare.  Welcome to Through the Looking Glass, GOP style.

If you recall way back a few months ago, or maybe it was years ago...

Anyway, for as long as I can recall, the republican party has been bashing President Obama for single-handedly increasing the debt.  According to the GOP, we poor folk, those who have lost our jobs, or our health, or our homes, have been living high off the hog here in the Democrats' U.S.A.  Entitlements, entitlements, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a republican on a soap-box talking about entitlements.

Of course, they didn't mean corporate entitlements.  The big corporations -- Wall Street banks, ExxonMobil, big pharma, big agribusiness -- they need us to keep feeding them.  The fatter they get, the hungrier.  After all, we are told, they are the job creators.

But the rest of us poor slobs are just sapping the strength of this great land.

Now the way I remember it, peacemaker Obama agreed to begin to cut the waste out of Medicare, if only the republicans in Congress would agree to just a teensy-weensy tax increase for the wealthy.  Which, of course, left us with Medicare cuts and no increase in taxes.

Those Medicare cuts that Paul Ryan wants you to believe will kill his grandmother are actually to a large extent cuts to the private insurance companies -- Medicare Advantage -- that supplements regular Medicare benefits.  Another large piece of the savings is through lower reimbursement rates to hospitals that see more of the uninsured, which will be less necessary under Obamacare and the individual mandate.

Not exactly killing grandma, is it?

But then, if you can stand to listen further, Ryan (and Mitt) will tell you that you shouldn't worry, you old people.  Because apparently they are only going to screw people under 55.

Okay, so that's Part One of 2012 Madness.

Then there is the unveiling of David Koch.  You know, the gazillionaire that owns Mitt Romney, and unknown other large pieces of the country.  Apparently, it is time for Koch to come out from behind the curtain, especially since we all had caught on to the fact that it was him running things anyway.

Of course, if you have gotten caught red-handed, the smart thing to do is act like you've planned it that way.  So David Koch is actually going to be an official delegate to the Convention.  Even more special, he will be honored at a "Salute to Entrepreneurs," and we can all get tickets.  Well, actually, we can all get on the wait list.  You might be surprised to know that this event, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, is actually funded by the Koch Brothers.  Well, maybe you won't be surprised.

And definitely not last, but all the irony-processing center in my brain can handle at one sitting, is the cornerstone of the convention.  No, I know you're thinking the anti-abortion plank, but that's the cornerstone behind the cornerstone.  The centerpiece of the convention, which is being "unveiled" today, is the "National Debt Clock".

Don't laugh.  It's true.

After creating laws that would chase down teens and women  trying to get birth control or abortions while shutting down the most cost-effective health care programs available to women...

After refusing to even consider the most modest tax hike for the wealthiest Americans...

After working exhaustively to kill Obamacare despite Congressional Budget Office and other expert opinions that savings will outweigh costs...

...these idiots are going to show us just how much debt we are accruing as they speak.

No, too much irony for me.  Need some air.